Multi-touch display devices often adopt many of the characteristics of touch-screen display devices, and yet they are generally more sophisticated than traditional touch-screen display devices in that they are capable of detecting the presence and location of multiple touches on, within, or within the vicinity of the surface of the display area at the same time. Specifically, multi-point input computing systems receive, recognize, and act upon multiple inputs at the same time. Because multi-point input computing systems are capable of receiving, recognizing, and acting upon multiple inputs at the same time, multi-point input computing systems may enable multiple users to interact with individual systems at the same time, thereby providing for collaboration between the multiple users.
Like traditional touch-screen display devices, some multi-touch display devices require that a user physically touch the surface of the display area with one or more fingers, styluses, and/or other mechanisms in order to engage the surface of the multi-touch display device, while other multi-touch display devices are capable of receiving input by detecting that one or more fingers, styluses, and/or other input mechanisms have engaged the surface of the multi-touch display device by hovering around, or otherwise in the vicinity of, the surface of the display area without requiring that the input mechanism actually make physical contact with the surface of the touch-screen display device.